Shadow Tag (4 page)

9

“So you have something already?”

The man who asked to be called Abul Mowt stood by the door, his face alive with expectation. “That was fast,” he told the two authors. “You guys are really good.” He turned and gave his two goons a couple of slow, smug nods that said, See, that’s why I’m the grand poobah here. He faced his prisoners again. “Tell me.”

“Actually,” Khoury said, “it’s something I’ve been working on for a book.”

“It’s good,” Berry added. “More than good. You’ll see.”

“I’m listening,” their captor said.

“Okay. So it involves hacking.”

Khoury waited, watching the reaction on his captor’s face.

A couple of cracks appeared across Abul Mowt’s forehead as he frowned with curiosity. “You mean, like hacking into a nuclear power plant to cause a meltdown?”

“No, no, please,” the writer said. “That’s old school. Been done to death. Plus they’ve been onto that one since before 9/11, before Y2K even. Too many firewalls. You’d never get in.”

“Where you can get in, though, is the banks,” Berry put in.

“The banks?” Abul Mowt looked displeased, his tone rising. “I’m not interested in stealing money. I want pain.”

“Hang on. We’re going to give you pain,” Khoury said.

“We’re not talking about stealing money,” Berry added. “We’re talking about wiping it out. All records of it.”

Abul Mowt seemed confused. “You want to wipe it out? You can’t wipe out cash.”

“No,” Khoury explained, “We don’t mean get rid of it. We mean wipe out all records of it. Everything. Everyone’s bank records, savings, deposits. Credit card debt, bank loans, mortgages. All records—wiped out. In one go.”

He glanced at Berry, then they both watched their captor, studying the reaction percolate across his face.

The man seemed lost in a deep, brow-furrowing mull. He was obviously not impressed. After a moment, he asked, “What kind of pain is that?”

“Are you kidding me?” Khoury shot back. “You’re talking chaos on an apocalyptic level. An economic meltdown. Forget the Great Depression. You’d send America right back to the days of the Wild West. Or worse. It’ll be like in
The Road
.”

“Or
Mad Max
,” Berry added.

“Or
Waterworld
, but without the water.”

“Same thing, really.”

“True.”

“Enough,” the man barked. “Look, I want to do something big. I want noise and spectacle, and I want people to die.”

“Yes, but this is so much better,” Khoury countered. “More sophisticated. More subtle.”

“Death by a thousand cuts,” Berry added. “Metaphorically speaking.”

Khoury slid him a glance, like, Easy on the vocab.

Berry gave him a discreet grin back.

“But your country already had a meltdown,” Abul Mowt said. “A few years ago. Your banks, your car manufacturers, they were all bust. Your government just bailed everyone out and everything went back to normal. This won’t be any different.”

“No,” Berry said. “It’ll be completely different. I’m telling you, this will be the biggest shock to hit the country—ever.”

“And we’ll tell you how to do it,” Khoury said. “Not just tell you. Assist you. Because you will need help. You’ll need hackers. Serious players. This won’t be easy. No brilliant master plan ever is. But we know where to find them.”

“And how to talk to them,” Berry added. “We have access.”

Abul Mowt didn’t seem convinced. In fact, he looked downright dejected.

“What?” Khoury asked.

“I don’t know,” the man said. “It’s just not what I imagined. It’s not … big.”

“It’ll be huge,” Khoury insisted.

“No, I mean big,” the man repeated. “We do this … what will it look like on the news? What will people see on TV? What’s the horrible image they’ll always remember? Blank screens at ATMs across the country? People sitting at their laptops and moaning about their bank statements?”

“Look, you kidnapped us because you think we’re good at what we do. Okay, this is a terrific plot, I’m telling you. This is New York Times top five bestselling stuff, easy.”

Berry nodded. “No question.”

Their captor was clearly struggling with it. “I don’t see it. It’s just not … dramatic. It’s not sexy.”

Khoury glanced at Berry, who spread his hands out slightly and shrugged with defeat.

Then the man seemed to reach a conclusion. “No. It’s not what I’m looking for. All this hacking stuff … it’s just numbers and letters on a screen. It’s not real. And it doesn’t last. It’s quickly forgotten.” He shook his head slowly, his tone low with disappointment. “I did an online chemistry course, I took a high speed driving course, I spent hours on my computer doing simulator flying lessons for planes and helicopters, all to prepare for this … and you want to use hackers?”

“You wanted something different,” Berry offered.

He shook his head and sighed. “Is that all you’ve got?”

He studied the two authors.

They had nothing to add.

“Fine,” he said, clearly dismayed. “I was hoping you’d come up with something special, but … fine. We’ll keep it simple. A bomb. Nuclear, dirty, I don’t care.”

His phone started ringing.

He pulled the unit out, spoke a few quick words in Arabic, then killed the call.

“I’ve got to go. New guests to attend to.”

His expression darkened, and he jabbed the air with a peremptory finger.

“Find me something great to blow up, and a foolproof way to do it. And do it soon. My patience isn’t limitless.”

10

Reilly and Malone were now in a locked, windowless room.

There were no light fittings inside, at least none that they could make out in the semi-darkness, but some faint light was coming in from under the door, enough to allow them to see what their surroundings were like. Not that there was much to see: bare walls, a couple of old mattresses on the floor, and the door. There was also a palpable dampness to the air which was consistent with them being in an underground basement.

Their hands were zip-locked behind their backs.

“Damn it,” Reilly hissed. “How could we let this happen?”

“I didn’t even see him make that call,” Malone said. “Did you?”

“No.”

Malone shook his head. “It’s very out of character for us both. We should have known he’d call for back-up.”

The room fell silent with frustration.

“We need to get out of here,” Malone finally said.

“Yeah, but how?”

Malone looked around the room. “There’s always a way, right?”

“Always.” Reilly was walking around the perimeter of the room, scrutinizing the walls. He did a second lap, then he stopped and tilted his head slightly, deep in thought. “I can’t see it yet.”

“There’s a way out, I can sense it,” Malone insisted. “It’s like … it’s at the tip of my consciousness. But I can’t put my finger on it.”

“Me too. It’s just … weird. It’s like I can’t fully engage my thinking on this.”

“Same here. It’s like something’s missing. Like I can’t focus.”

They stared at each other in the semi-darkness. “What do we do?”

“Keep thinking,” Reilly said. “And hope our usual inspiration kicks in soon.”

In a similar bare but illuminated room, Khoury was also pacing around.

“Tough pitch meeting, huh? And where the hell is the food he promised us?” the author grumbled. “I’m starving.”

“‘Other guests,’” Berry said, his focus still on their captor’s parting words. “What do you think he meant by that?”

“Other writers?” Khoury wondered.

“Maybe. Which would be good. The more of us go missing, the more someone’s going to notice.”

“But it makes you and me disposable if we don’t deliver.” Khoury. “We need to come up with the winning plot if we want to stay alive.”

“Who do you think they’ve grabbed?”

“Who’s in town besides Lee and Rollins?”

“Simon Toyne. Sandra Brown. Lisa Gardner. Peter James.”

Khoury frowned. “Crap. That’s some tough competition. We’re going to need to get our thinking caps on big time.”

Berry said, “Maybe we’re not approaching this the right way. What would Malone and Reilly do?”

“What do you mean?”

“We always write them into this kind of trouble. But when we do, we always write in something tiny, a crack in the set-up that gives them a way out.”

“But we didn’t write this. This is real life.”

“True, but maybe there’s a crack here too. Or maybe there’s something we’ve used in one of our books that we could use here.”

Khoury grinded it over for a moment. “Do you have any pills on you? Anything that can make one of us so sick that they need to get us to a hospital?”

“
Rasputin’s Shadow
,” Berry said.

Khoury smiled and aimed a congratulatory finger his way. “Well done, sir. Well done. I love a focused reader.”

Berry grimaced with disappointment. “Sadly, I don’t have any vials of psychotropic powder on me right now.”

Khoury scanned the room again. Then his eyes settled on the mattress Abul Mowt had shot up. Bits of spring and cotton were sticking out of it, and the image triggered something inside him. He stared at it, deep in thought, then a small grin broke across his face.

“I used something in an old screenplay of mine,” he told Berry. “My character needed to sneak into a high-security facility. He had gone to the house of a sleazebag who worked there and knocked him out, so he had the guy and the guy’s Porsche to use, but the place had fingerprint checks as well as overhead thermal scanners that checked the cars at the entrance gate.”

“So how’d he get in?”

“I’ll show you.”

11

Berry heard the keys working the lock seconds before the door to the authors’ cell swung open. He was ready, sitting patiently on his mattress with his back against the wall.

The door creaked open, and the two now-familiar goons stepped in. One—the driver—stayed by the door. The other had a full carrier bag in his hand.

“Your food,” the man with the bag announced—then he stopped in his tracks.

His eyes, wide with alarm, scoured the large, empty space.

“Where’s your friend?”

Berry sounded surprised. “Friend?”

The goon was quickly losing it. The bag just tumbled out of his hand and he reached for his gun. “Your friend. The other writer.”

Berry looked around the room with mock bewilderment. It was, in fact, empty. Apart from Berry and the two goons, there was no one else in the room.

“I don’t know,” Berry said in a surprised, concerned tone. “He’s not with you?”

“No, he’s not with us. Where is he?”

“I don’t know. I fell asleep, and when I woke up, he was gone. I assumed you took him to use the toilet or something. Speaking of which—”

“No,” the man screamed. “Where is he? Where is he?” He was now leaping around in a mad panic, waving his gun around like a lunatic.

“I’m telling you I don’t know,” Berry said, then his worried tone turned conspiratorial. “Man, are you boys going to get in trouble?”

The man looked at him in utter bewilderment, then turned to the other goon and started rambling something in Arabic. The driver had now also stepped into the room and was walking around its perimeter, scrutinizing the walls as if anyone could just melt into them.

Berry couldn’t understand what they were saying, but it sounded like they were having a heated debate about what to do. You didn’t need to be the Amazing Kreskin to guess what was going on: they were crapping themselves about what the head goon was going to do to them when he found out one of his prized authors had somehow escaped—and, more critically, which one of them was going to be the one to tell him about it.

The hissing match kept going until a fierce tirade from the gunman finally pummeled his cohort into submission. With drooped shoulders and a fatalistic shrug, the driver muttered something as he shuffled off into the darkness beyond, leaving the first goon alone with Berry.

“Where is he? How did he get out of here?” the man asked, his face sweating in an intense fear and bewilderment combo.

“Honestly, I have no idea,” Berry said with forced sincerity and compassion as he pushed himself up to his feet and took a few steps away from the mattress.

The goon kept his eyes locked on him, his gaze and his gun tracking Berry as the author skirted the long side of the room, ambling slowly towards the opposite wall, where the other mattress lay.

“I mean, it’s not humanly possible, is it? For a fully-formed adult male to just vanish like that. Is it? Unless,” Berry added as he stopped, turned and raised a questioning finger with dramatic flourish, “unless he managed to go through the wall.”

“‘Through the wall’? What are you talking about?”

“What, you don’t know? No, of course you don’t. Not many people do.” His expression went all professorial. “It’s called quantum tunneling. I only know that because Raymond told me he was researching it for his next book.”

The man had rotated to keep facing Berry, his face a pained mix of confusion and worry.

“See, there was this fellow in Paris by the name of Dutilleul who worked as a clerk in the Registration Ministry. This man had the ability to walk through walls,” Berry informed his captor, “like at platform nine and three quarters at Kings Cross in the Harry Potter books—but you probably haven’t read them, have you?”

The goon gave him a sheepish shrug. “Actually, I saw the movies.”

“Pirated downloads?”

The man’s eyes dropped guiltily to the ground.

“Of course, what else.” Berry raised a chastising finger. “Anyway, I’d love to tell you more about it, but now’s not really the place or time for it.”

He added and emphasis on the word “time,” and, as he did, looked over the goon’s shoulder.

But nothing happened.

The man seemed confused. “You really think it’s possible?”

“I do, but like I said, now is not the right
time
.” Again, he raised his voice when saying the word “time,” and again, he looked over the goon’s shoulder.

A sudden, loud rustle coming from behind him surprised the goon. He turned and saw the mattress Berry had been sitting on rise up off the ground, on its side, along with a loud shriek. The man raised his gun in fear—but before he could fire, Berry, who was now behind him, unleashed a vicious side kick, buckling the man’s knee.

The man yelped as his leg collapsed, and he went down, lopsided, the gun falling from his grasp as he hit the ground.

Berry didn’t wait.

He’d already moved in and followed his first strike with a savage kick to the man’s kidneys, followed by a punch to the side of his head.

“That’s for threatening my family, dickhead,” he added as he knocked the man out with a final hammer-fist to the man’s neck.

He grabbed the gun off the ground and crossed the room to where Khoury was extricating himself from the mattress.

They’d used the holes opened up by the lead goon’s gunshots to tear open the cover of the mattress, then they’d pulled out some of its innards—springs, foam and cotton—enough for Khoury to be able to fit himself into the mattress, just like the character in his script had done to the car seat of the bad guy’s Porsche before stuffing the man into it and sitting on him. Like a puppet master, his character had manipulated the bad guy’s arm to clear the fingerprint scan, while the overhead scanner only saw the thermal image of one body since he was sitting on top of him.

The two writers had then taken the bits they’d removed and spread them under the other mattress, flattening them evenly so it was barely noticeably higher off the ground.

Then Khoury had waited for Berry’s signal.

“I thought you were never going to make your move,” Berry said.

“I couldn’t hear you,” Khoury replied, brushing his ears. “I’ve still got cotton in there.” He looked across at the downed goon, then took in the gun in Berry’s hand. “Malone would be proud.”

“I guess that Krav Maga training I did for research paid off.” He gestured towards the door. “Let’s get the hell out here before the others get back.”

They scooted out of the room and into a long, dark corridor that led to a staircase, Berry leading the way in a slightly crouched stance and on high alert. They were passing a door to their right when the goon leader and his other underling appeared, coming down the stairs.

Shots exploded around them, as the goons started firing.

“Shit,” Khoury said as they both hugged the wall, looking for cover. “What are you waiting for, shoot back.”

“You do realize I’ve never fired a gun in my life,” Berry yelled.

“Just point the damn thing and pull the trigger.”

Berry did just that.

Two, three, four times.

The two goons scrambled back up the stairs as bullets bit into the walls around them just as shouts came from the room next to where the authors were huddled.

“Hey, who’s out there? Get us out of here.”

Berry looked at Khoury in confusion, then leaned closer to the door and said, “Who are you?”

“FBI agents,” the voice said. “You American?”

“Through and through,” Berry replied. “Stand clear.”

He stepped back and fired a shot into the door lock, destroying it, then kicked the door in.

“You’re getting real handy with that thing,” Khoury said.

Malone and Reilly emerged from the darkness. Their hands were still zip-locked, but they were no longer behind their backs. Adrenaline was running high all around.

Malone asked, “What’s going on?”

“The guys who grabbed us,” Khoury said, “one of them’s knocked out back there. The other two are up there.”

“Let’s go,” Reilly said. “Stay behind us.” Then he told Berry, “Give me the gun.”

Berry handed it over.

They moved quickly but quietly, down the hall and up the stairs—Reilly, Malone, Khoury, and Berry. They crept up the stairs, Malone’s gun leading the way, and emerged into what looked like the ground floor of an empty warehouse. But a door that looked like the main entrance hung wide open.

Reilly shouted, “Come on,” and he and Malone rushed out into the daylight.

Khoury looked at Berry, shrugged, then said, “What the hell. We’ve written about this kind of thing often enough. Might as well live it for once.”

“Go,” Berry said.

The two writers charged after them.